Gravitational Wave Evidence of the 'Big Bang' May Not Hold Up with Analysis

February 3, 2015 2:55 PM

14
0

In March of last year, scientists announced that they had observed the portion of cosmic background radiation, which is the fossil radiation from the Big Bang, generated by gravitational waves. In other words, they'd made the first observation of the cosmological effects of this phenomenon predicted by Einstein's theory of General Relativity. Now, though, new evidence is calling this discovery into question.

"Basically, what we conclude is that no investigation of this kind can escape a systematic study of contaminating sources," said Carlo Baccigalupi, SISSA cosmologists and one of the authors of the new paper, in a news release. "And it can only be systematic if several instruments are used at the sam...